In American Sirens, writer Kevin Hazzard recounts how a group of Black paramedics in Pittsburgh in the 1970s pioneered and professionalized the modern day ambulance service.
The EMS workforce today is majority white and male, with the proportion of Black paramedics. Meanwhile, most people do not know that this profession has roots in a Black neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Why is it important that this story is told?
When I started digging into it, I immediately realized by talking to the men and women involved that some people died waiting for this story to be told, and others were waiting for the world to simply acknowledge this incredible thing they did and the service they provided to all of us. This was not a small achievement. This was a massive, massive thing they did. They all say I was just doing a job, but they knew that they were changing the world. That's why it meant so much to them.
On its surface, urban renewal was a good thing. Yet, what nobody wants to acknowledge is that to do this thing, to build these universities and hospital systems and put in highways, somebody had to lose. That's not a very flattering story to tell. The un-American thing was idea of public money being used for what people viewed as a business. There were private companies who felt that getting city money was perhaps unconstitutional. The other question that came up was if we are going to say that an ambulance is a public service that needs to be paid for with public dollars, what happens to the rest of medicine?
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